Lim J, et al. - The reason for this examination was to investigate the white matter (WM) microstructural findings which underlie clinical psychopathology clusters in schizophrenia and hypothesized that these symptom clusters are linked with common and unique WM tracts. The authors in this study found shared and specific WM changes and their relationships with specific symptom clusters, which potentially allows for monitoring of such white matter findings related to clinical presentations in schizophrenia over treatment and illness course.

Methods

• Using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, seventy-six healthy controls (HC), and one hundred forty-eight patients with schizophrenia (SZ) were recruited and severity of symptomatology in schizophrenia was evaluated.
• After that, WM fractional anisotropy (FA) values were extracted from their diffusion tensor images.
• Psychopathology clusters were first determined utilizing factor analysis and the connection between these symptom factors and FA values were then surveyed with structural equation modelling, which included covariates, for example, age, sex, duration of illness and medications prescribed.

Results

• The results of this study showed that patients with schizophrenia had reduced FA in the genu of corpus callosum (gCC) compared to HC.
• Findings revealed that a three-factor model, namely Positive, Negative, Disorganised factors, was determined as the best fit for the data whereas all three psychopathology factors were related to decreased FA in the gCC and bilateral cingulate gyrus.
• It was noted that higher Negative factor scores were uniquely correlated with diminished FA in the right sagittal striatum and right superior longitudinal fasciculus.